Your experience mirrors my experience. First Avid? Ver 4.0 on a Mac Quadra in 1993. I think it cost $60K.

You can certainly give AVID credit for "developing" the NLE, but I don't think they'll be around to see
the "democratization" of the NLE. That honor has to go to Apple. Harvard MBA's will be studying this story arc in classes for years to come. Title: "How to take a world class brand and screw it up".

I do see them morphing into a "server company" as Terry Curren suggests.